your ears are full
by callmesandy
Summary: "You barely met my uncle Morgan, he was a little bit of an asshole. Also, I don't like the name. We didn't get to that part of the conversation," Pepper said. "But we did, in your timeline," Tony said. (endgame fixit)


for the fandom bingo trope spot time travel. not mine, no profit garnered. thanks a! title from coffee and tv by blur.

* * *

She was pregnant and even after the twists and turns to the end, she had a girl and named her Abigail.

"Not Morgan?"

"No, of course not. Why would I name the baby after some dream of yours? You barely met my uncle Morgan, he was a little bit of an asshole. Also, I don't like the name. We didn't get to that part of the conversation," Pepper said.

"But we did, in your timeline," Tony said. He sounded befuddled, but his entire concentration was on Abigail's face. "For you, I've been here since you urinated on the test."

"Yes," Pepper said. "And I easily persuaded you."

"Abigail's nice. I like it more than Morgan," Tony said. And that was that.

She missed the Tony of the last year. She didn't have to tell the new Tony anything about taking care of the baby. He was still Tony Stark, he learned enough for an undergraduate degree in early childhood development in two nights. He was frenetic and obsessive about it when he wasn't clinging to Abigail.

"We're not calling her Abby, right?" Tony frowned. "I've decided I don't like the sound of it."

"You've decided," Pepper said. She shrugged. "That works for me, fine, no Abby. You can't stop nicknames, though."

"I know, unstoppable force and all that," Tony said.

She was a little upset that Tony wasn't upset about missing his own wedding. "We can do it again," Pepper said. "So you remember it."

Tony was fine with it, totally fine. "But you remember it? It was good for you?"

Pepper nodded. "It was lovely. Ten people on a mountain top in the Rockies."

"We wouldn't be able to get that feeling again," Tony said. "As long as you remember it, I can stick with the video." It was an excellent video, very high quality.

Don't you want it, she thought. Everything he knew of the past year and maybe more was loss and death. Even if he didn't tell her, she could tell. He was still Tony Stark, but she could see the pain in the way he carried himself. Maybe he was trying to heal himself by focusing on Abigail. Maybe he'd decided that was better.

She steeled herself to bring it up anyway. She'd grown used to the level of communication she got from her Tony and now she had this one. A few decimal points off, she thought. If she were quantifying it. She finally said, "Hey. Why don't you want the happy memory? The wedding?"

(It wasn't finally, it was three days after the new Tony showed up in her life.)

He looked at her and she could see him thinking at his usual five thousand miles a minute. He said, "I'm good. I don't want to impinge on your, on what you remember. You have your perfect wedding, you don't have to do it again to make me happy. That makes me happy."

He very much was still Tony Stark. Her Tony.

Abigail didn't notice the difference at all. She never reacted differently, even though Tony spent two days figuring out how to hold Abigail, how careful he should be. Maybe Abigail didn't sense any change.

That morning Tony woke up and it woke her up because he was weeping. His hands were clutching at the sheet and blankets. At first, Pepper thought it was Abigail. But she looked at Abigail first and she was still asleep. The baby slept in the big bed with the two of them.

This was new and weird. It was late and she was confused. He said, "Sorry."

She said, "It's fine, it's fine, it's okay." She hugged him until she felt him relax a little. Then he let her go and disengaged. He turned on his side so he was facing Abigail, watching her breathe.

She laid back down and watched Abigail, too. "It's really calming," she said. "It's really calming."

"You can say that twice," Tony said, with something like a smile.

She almost wanted to avoid talking about it. She remembered at one of the wedding celebrations, when everything was good and right, she'd been talking to one of her sorority sisters. Georgia was talking about her florist coordination website, Pepper was trying to be interested. Georgia said, "You don't care about this at all, do you?"

"Sorry, sorry," Pepper said. "I suck."

"It's your wedding celebration reception," Georgia said. "I don't mind small talk, but also I hate small talk? But I don't want to jump into the deep topics, you know? Do you want to hear about my fear my daughter just has no friends because maybe she's boring?"

"I'm sure she's not boring," Pepper said. "She's definitely not boring. How old is she?"

"She's six," Georgia said. "I think she's boring."

Pepper found herself laughing. "Maybe back to small talk?"

She wondered if she could try the same thing with Tony. She briefly considered the idea of trying to impose a small talk only rule in their marriage. Tony would fail quickly, Pepper faster. So she only waited until breakfast when she said, "So you were upset last night."

"That is true," he said. "But I'm mostly fine."

"I don't think that's true," she said.

"It could be," Tony said. "I'm sure it will be soon enough."

"You're just going to power through it? Grit your teeth and white knuckle through it?"

"I've done it before," Tony said.

"Oh, sure, that worked out super well," Pepper said. "You can ask for help."

"Help?" He smiled at her. She nearly gave in. It was even harder now since his smile looked so much like Abigail's.

"Not me, I'm no help," she said. "Of course I want to help you, but I can't be everything. I can't even be most of need professionals. People who can be objective."

"The many many professionals familiar with time travel and alternative timelines?"

"They don't have to know quantum physics to know about trauma," Pepper said. "Though, honestly, I bet we could find someone who knows both. We're very rich."

"We're insanely rich. It's immoral how rich we are. Thank God, we have foundations to deal with this," Tony said. "We should give more. Why are people starving when we have this much money?"

"Even with all our money, structural inequality is hard to unpack. I promise, we're working on it." Pepper sat down by the counter. Abigail made little noises from her bassinet on the counter. "But back to the topic of you, which you usually don't avoid."

"It'll probably pass," Tony said.

"I don't think so," Pepper said. "But we can wait, I guess."

She rubbed Abigail's soft cheek. Pepper said, "Do you think Abigail will be a boring child?"

"Obviously not," Tony said.


End file.
